﻿ I heard you don’t like our podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. But have you listened to 76 hours of it yet? Honestly, mate, it opens up after that. The 76-hour mark, that’s when it “clicks”. But I understand if you don’t have the time. Just skip ahead to this week’s episode, in which we’re talking about games about which we changed our minds. Listen…

﻿ Life is hard and so are videogames. So when you do a tough thing, take pride. It doesn’t matter if it seems like a small step for other people, if it’s a big step for you, go ahead and puff your chest out. But do it quickly, for heaven’s sake. We’ve only got an hour. This is the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show,…

It still amazes me how coherent roguelike platformer Spelunky was, despite its dozens of moving parts. Monsters, traps and players interact with each other in so many ways. Next year, Spelunky 2 is adding a bucketload of new elements and systems to its repertoire, as you can see in action in the new trailer below. There's physics-driven fluids, arrows you can use as footholds, mounts…

I have a terrible memory, which is sometimes an asset. It means that every now and then I get to experience a jolt of joy when I remember that Spelunky 2 is a thing - a thing that I've little doubt will take over my life in the same way that both the original freeware and the remaster did. If you somehow haven't played Spelunky,…

Sometimes you need a hand to hold, so we’ve updated our list of the 25 best co-op games to play on PC with a headset-wearing friend or a muted stranger. Everything's better with a pal or two in tow, from collaborative puzzle solving to sublime double stealth takedowns. Equally sublime are when those takedowns go awry, your partner shrieks in panic and all hands are…

Progression is so often an illusion. Many games use the idea of permanent progression as a way of tickling our lizard brains with a growing pile of loot or numbers which constantly tick up, so that we feel like we’re achieving something while we sit in front of a computer and repeat the same set of tasks over and over again. The beauty of permadeath…

What Works And Why is a new monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game and analyses what makes it good. I love Deus Ex, System Shock 2, and Dishonored 2, and the name for these games is dumb: they're 'immersive sims'. If you asked me what I liked about them, my answer would be a…

There are more wonderful games being released on PC each month than ever before. In such a time of plenty, it's important that you spend your time as wisely as possible. Thankfully, we're here to help. What follows are our picks for the best PC games ever made.

Keep an eye on the Sony announcements during Paris Games Week, I said. Maybe From Software would pull off a remarkable double-whammy by revealing Bloodborne 2 and saying it'd be coming to PC and that a special edition of the first would be arriving on Steam tomorrow. Maybe Naughty Dog would stroll onto a stage and declare that they'd accidentally made The Last Of Us…

Some games can be finished, completed, defeated or beaten. They have an end-point, even though they might be replayable. Others have the potential to go on forever. Whatever the case, there always comes a point when you're done with a game, and it might be long before the credits roll, or it might be after that one update that breaks a habit that has lasted…

I keep playing Caveblazers [official site], stopping between lives only to message people to complain about Caveblazers. The roguelike-platformer has so many systems I find frustrating or unsatisfactory, but one big thing that keeps drawing me back.

Sometimes, a developer's last game hints at their next one. Other times, the programmer of Spelunky HD announces a basketball beat 'em up. Say hallo to Dunk Lords [official site], jamming our way in 2018. This is a delightful surprise, and not just because of that name. The slam-jamming shakalaka 'em up boasts 2v2 b-balling action with fisticuffs, special moves, and environmental hazards, which sounds…

We’ve all been there. When a puzzle is so obtuse you can’t even begin to work out how to solve it. When you’ve been searching for the next bonfire in a Dark Souls game for hours on end. When you've committed to finding a game’s scattered collectibles and one proves a bit too well hidden. Wikis and guides can replace hours of frustration with a…

The latest Humble Bundle is a good'un, with games including Spelunky, Rocket League, Nidhogg, and Skullgirls going cheap. The first three of those are modern PC classics, I'd say, and Skullgirls isn't half-bad either. The Humble Revelmode Bundle has more games too, obvs.

As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there's always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it's far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new…

This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites a developer to help him put their game up on blocks and take a wrench to hack out its best feature, just to see how it works. The arrow trap that shoots the croc man that causes him to telefrag you. Being caught mid-jump by a boomerang that juggles you towards a spike trap, leaving you stunned…

I'm used to Spelunky [official site] speedruns being filled with incredible feats, but the "No Gold True Pacifist Hell Run" below is a thing of wonder. To clarify: entering into the game's Hell world requires obtaining the Ankh from the Black Market, killing Anubis for his staff, killing Olmec, and completing the game requires killing Yama in hell. How do you kill things without violence?…